EDITORIAL Thoughtless toppling
The vandals who tore down and defaced three statues in Golden Gate Park on Friday do not deserve to be called protesters. Their actions were an affront to the very serious, longoverdue debate in this nation over what to do about memorials and monuments of ignoble figures of American history.
This little rampage through the park that brought down the statues of Ulysses S. Grant, Father Junipero Serra and Francis Scott Key by a mindless mob is exactly the type of craziness that makes San Francisco a punch line by those who are looking to belittle a legitimate cause.
The vandalism is especially maddening because San Francisco has been so willing to have robust debates about the propriety of memorials in public places — and to take action when merited. Three years ago it stripped the name of Justin Herman, who oversaw the brutish redevelopment of swaths of the heart of African American culture in the Fillmore and Western Addition in the 1960s; two years ago removed the “Early Days” statue at Civic Center Plaza that depicted a Native American gazing up at European colonizers; and last week relocated a Christopher Columbus statue at Coit Tower that was being targeted for an attack.
Students of history know that Grant, Serra and Key were far from perfect. Serra’s 2015 canonization as a saint was controversial because of his treatment of native Californians during the establishment of the missions; Key, author of the national anthem, was a slaveholder who as a district attorney tried to silence abolitionists. Their presence in Golden Gate Park was a fair subject for public debate.
The attack on Grant’s statue seemed particularly odd at a time when American society is engaged in a reckoning about race and injustice. He may have been a onetime slaveholder and a flawed president in many respects, but he did lead the Union Army to victory in the Civil War and in the White House was a forceful advocate for Reconstruction and elimination of the Ku Klux Klan when some of his fellow Republicans were weakening.
Friday’s chaotic spree was thoughtless and disgraceful.